The record was broken. That was not a cliché or a euphemism, it really was completely and utterly broken. Snapped in two due to a bit too much rough and a lot of tumble. And it was all Johnny’s fault anyway. Our dad had told us not to touch the old LPs stacked neatly at the bottom of Mum’s bookshelf, but he just had to try it. Just had to see if he could work out the record player – the HiFi as Dad called it. He almost had it too, only he couldn’t find the play button, and when...
Imagine you're sitting at a table and the drunk version of you sits before you.
What would you say to one another?
Would the drunk you tell you the truth, admit to all the honesty you bury deep within or would the sober you manage to quell all of the clarity with your denial and issues?
And which one is the real one at this point? You spend more time with alcohol than you do with the voices in your head these days. So if your friends were to join you at the table, which of the two of you...
I will put my fingers together and pull the grass up from the roots. I will do it before my mother comes outside. If I don't she'll ask "what have you been doing out here all this time?" But if I do, I'll have something to show for myself. I'll give her the stalks of grass as if they are flowers. She may thank me, but she more likely will wonder why I bothered to dig up the good grass.
I will move away from home one day soon. I will plant a garden where I live. I will make...
So, at some point she had apparently managed to get married.
She stared at the occasional table and thought about that. She'd found a wonderful man, she'd collaborated with him, she'd fucked him, she'd had a wonderful time, they'd made a wonderful home together, and a wonderful baby together, and, really, what did it matter that she'd never finished her degree? She had a husband she loved and a son she loved and a life she always envied, until she shook herself a bit and remembered that it was hers.
There were thousands of other ways to do important work...
I come from the green.
You run to the red.
I'm walking, you're runing.
Until the blue point, we met.
We walk together under the blue sky into the twilight.
On our way, I feel like to follow the white cloud. But you said the dark one is more tempting.
I don't like rain, though you come from the rain.
Still we walk. I stopped when it comes rain but you just stand there, under the rain.
The rain is getting bigger. Then we stop from walk for longer time. Until the rain stop.
We walk again, together. Now you're...
My head is pounding, three days of this. The wind has been blowing. I look out my office window and it is either the eye of the storm with it's fits and starts or we're near the end of it. The trees are bending, but there are little black leaves, birds. They're sitting swaying in the tree, calm. When they fly off, they all fly off. Its like watching a school of fish. One makes a subtle turn that sets off a wave and undulation.
Its an eerie view, because suddenly I thought of those childhood explorations in the woods...
She should have been writing. Instead, she watched the time slide away from her.
5'44". 5'32". 5'11".
What was this? she asked—not herself, but God, the heavens, the hall monitor, anybody but herself. Was this paralysis?
No. This was a choice. And even though she closed her eyes, she still couldn't get away from that.
4'09". 3'58".
Why not write? There was the prompt on the page. She could do this. She was good at this. She always had been, always, always. Write on command. Paper comes back; mark at the top.
She didn't work hard for years and take...
The fetid winds drifted heavily across the abandoned battlefield. Stench and Decay and the futility of it all. To our protagonists it was a bounty of untold riches. Coin and Cloth and untold amounts of scrap metal to be melted down. To the pickers and eaters of the dead this waste of life and treasure might feed thier kith and kin for many days. Wherever the Gods of War traveled, they were circling with unnatural patience.
Justin was just a regular guy before I discovered him. Sure, he'd played Chronoball before. I'd even seen him do quite well for an amateur, when I checked my notes later. But that fight in the bar was what got him noticed. He's on more Creds than several small planets' GDPs now; I get 20% of course.
When Jack, who'd always had it in for him since High School, threw the first punch in the Snug, Justin hadn't flinched. He'd thrown the Chronoball, which had been resting on the bartop, over Jack's head. Contact with the far wall activated the...
Whenever the mailperson knocks
They deliver to us a new box
I don't know from whom
But I wish for their doom
On all of their houses, a pox